Welcome to NEPCA Fantastic, the official blog of the Fantastic (Fantasy, Horror, and Science Fiction) Area of the Northeast Popular Culture/American Culture Association (a.k.a. NEPCA), a regional affiliate of the Popular Culture Association and the American Culture Association. Founded in 2008 and online since 2010, we seek to provide both a resource to potential presenters and a gateway to furthering the study of the intermedia traditions of the fantastic in all their varied forms.

Call for papers:
Proposals are welcome on all aspects of popular and American culture for inclusion in the 2016 Mid-Atlantic Popular & American Culture Association conference in Atlantic City, NJ. Single papers, panels, roundtables, and alternative formats are welcome.

Proposals should take the form of 300-word abstracts, and may only be submitted to one appropriate area. The deadline for submission is Thursday, June 30, 2016.

For a list of areas and area chair contact information, visit mapaca.net/areas. General questions can be directed to mapaca at mapaca dot net.

MAPACA’s membership is comprised of college and university faculty, independent scholars and artists, and graduate and undergraduate students. MAPACA is an inclusive professional organization dedicated to the study of popular and American culture in all their multi-disciplinary manifestations. It is a regional division of the Popular Culture and American Culture Association, which, in the words of Popular Culture Association founder Ray Browne, is a “multi-disciplinary association interested in new approaches to the expressions, mass media and all other phenomena of everyday life.”

full name / name of organization:
Lorraine K. Stock / International Association for Robin Hood Studies
contact email:
lstock@uh.edu

Lorraine K. Stock is soliciting abstracts for SEMA 2016 and Kalamazoo 2017. Please note the deadlines, as the SEMA one is soon. While the Kalamazoo deadline for abstracts is in September, Lorraine would appreciate abstracts sooner than later so that she can better plan for Kalamazoo 2017 as session proposals are due to the Congress in mid-June.

Robin Hood (hereafter RH), his outlaw comrades, and antagonists sprang ex nihilo from the greenwood and urban centers of Nottinghamshire and Yorkshire in such late medieval ballads as RH and the Monk, RH and the Potter, The Gest, and RH and Guy of Gisborne. Presuming audience familiarity with RH’s biography and the origins of his outlawry, these early texts narrated RH’s adventures in medias res, without supplying background about or the origins of the outlaw. Langland’s casual reference to the “Rimes of Robyn Hode” in Piers Plowman (1377) attests medieval familiarity with RH’s real or fictional identity. Already by the 15th century, Andrew of Wyntoun, Walter Bower, and John of Fordun chronicled (therefore historicized) RH’s exploits. 16th-century writers further summarized or augmented RH’s growing collective biography. Citing an “auncient pamphlet,” in 1569 Richard Grafton historicized his elevation of RH from yeomanry to an earldom. Anthony Munday’s 1598 plays, The Downfall … and the Death of Robert Earl of Huntington, extended the growing “biography” of RH: situating him in Richard I’s Plantagenet court; endorsing his earldom; and affiancing him to noble Matilda Fitzwater/Maid Marian, absent in the medieval ballads. The creation of anonymous 17th and 18th-century broadside ballads and chapbooks supplied backstory for the outlaw’s “history.” Bishop Percy combined ballads from Samuel Pepys’ 1723 collection with the Percy Folio’s texts (including RH ballads) in his 1765 oft-reissued Reliques of Ancient English Poetry. Capping this biographical imperative, antiquarian Joseph Ritson published his 1795 (and oft-reissued) 2-volume Robin Hood: A Collection of All the Ancient Poems, Songs, and Ballads…To Which are Prefixed Historical Anecdotes of His Life. Ritson’s Preface, a 10-page “Life” of RH, is documented by 104 pp. of “Notes and Illustrations” supporting his construction of RH’s personal history. Subsequent iterations of RH’s biography adopted and adapted Ritson’s paradigm.

Rather than solicit documentation attesting the historical existence of an actual outlaw who was (or supplied the model for) the figure now recognized as “RH,” this session about biography/historiography and RH invites 15-20 minute papers investigating various manifestations of this enduring imperative to adapt, augment, or change the “history” or constructed “biography” of RH in any media including (but not limited to): medieval and post-medieval literary texts and chronicles; modern historiography (Rodney Hilton, Maurice Keen, etc.); post-medieval poetry, plays, fiction; opera; films; television; print and film documentaries. Final paper length depends on the number of apt abstracts.

For those interested in submitting an abstract for the 55th Annual Southeastern Medieval Association (SEMA) Conference, University of Tennessee, Knoxville, October 6-8, 2016, send 1-page abstracts before May 16 to Lorraine K. Stock, University of Houston: lstock@uh.edu

For those interested in submitting an abstract for the 51st International Congress on Medieval Studies, Kalamazoo, MI, May 11-14, 2017, send 1-page abstracts before September 10 to Lorraine K. Stock, University of Houston: lstock@uh.edu

Formed in 2008, the Fantastic (Fantasy, Horror, and Science Fiction) Area celebrates its ninth anniversary in 2016, and, this year, we hope to commemorate the 200th-anniversary of the composition of Frankenstein by seeking proposals from scholars of all levels for papers that explore any aspect of Mary Shelley’s novel and its relationship to texts of the ongoing Frankenstein tradition. We are especially interested in papers that explore underrepresented works and media.

Please see our website NEPCA Fantastic (http://nepcafantastic.blogspot.com) for further details and ideas. Presentations will be limited to 15-20 minutes in length (depending on final panel size).

Potential presenters should be aware that studies of Frankenstein in popular culture do not exist in a vacuum, and, in pitching their ideas, will be expected to be familiar with previous discussions of the Frankenstein tradition, including Donald F. Glut’s The Frankenstein Catalog (McFarland, 1984) and The Frankenstein Archive (McFarland, 2002) and Susan Tyler Hitchcock’s Frankenstein: A Cultural History (Norton, 2007).

If you are interested in proposing a paper, please address inquiries and send your biography and paper abstract (each of 500 words) to the Fantastic (Fantasy, Horror, and Science Fiction) Area Chair at nepcafantastic@gmail.com, noting “Frankenstein and the Fantastic Proposal 2016” in your subject line. Do also submit your information, under the “Fantastic (Fantasy, Horror, and Science Fiction) Area,” on NEPCA’s official Paper Proposal Form accessible from https://nepca.wordpress.com/2016-conference/.

The Northeast Popular/American Culture Association (a.k.a. NEPCA) was founded in 1974 as a professional organization for scholars living in New England and New York. It is a community of scholars interested in advancing research and promoting interest in the disciplines of popular and/or American culture. NEPCA’s membership consists of university and college faculty members, emeriti faculty, secondary school teachers, museum specialists, graduate students, independent scholars, and interested members of the general public. NEPCA is an independently funded affiliate of the Popular Culture Association/American Culture Association. Membership is open to all interested parties, regardless of profession, rank, or residency. NEPCA holds an annual conference that invites scholars from around the globe to participate. In an effort to keep costs low, it meets on college campuses throughout the region.

Formed in 2008, the Fantastic (Fantasy, Horror, and Science Fiction) Area celebrates its ninth anniversary in 2016, and we seek proposals from scholars of all levels for papers that explore any aspect of the intermedia traditions of the fantastic (including, but not limited to, elements of fairy tale, fantasy, gothic, horror, legend, mythology, and science fiction) and how creative artists have altered our preconceptions of these subtraditions by producing innovative works in diverse countries and time periods and for audiences at all levels.

Special topics: Given the proximity of the conference to Halloween, we are always interested in proposals related to monsters and the monstrous, and, in anticipation of the two hundredth anniversary of the publication of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein in 2018, we are especially hoping for proposals that address aspects of the Frankenstein tradition and the fantastic.

Please see our website NEPCA Fantastic (http://nepcafantastic.blogspot.com) for further details and ideas. Presentations will be limited to 15-20 minutes in length (depending on final panel size).

If you are interested in proposing a paper, please address inquiries and send your biography and paper abstract (each of 500 words) to the Fantastic (Fantasy, Horror, and Science Fiction) Area Chair at nepcafantastic@gmail.com, noting “NEPCA Fantastic Proposal 2016” in your subject line. Do also submit your information on NEPCA’s official Paper Proposal Form accessible from https://nepca.wordpress.com/2016-conference/.

The Northeast Popular/American Culture Association (a.k.a. NEPCA) was founded in 1974 as a professional organization for scholars living in New England and New York. It is a community of scholars interested in advancing research and promoting interest in the disciplines of popular and/or American culture. NEPCA’s membership consists of university and college faculty members, emeriti faculty, secondary school teachers, museum specialists, graduate students, independent scholars, and interested members of the general public. NEPCA is an independently funded affiliate of the Popular Culture Association/American Culture Association. Membership is open to all interested parties, regardless of profession, rank, or residency. NEPCA holds an annual conference that invites scholars from around the globe to participate. In an effort to keep costs low, it meets on college campuses throughout the region.

interdisciplinary from cfp.english.upenn.edu

film and television from cfp.english.upenn.edu

theatre from cfp.english.upenn.edu

North American Victorian Studies Association Blog Feed

Call for Papers 2017

The 2017 meeting of NEPCA will convene at University of Massachusetts Amherst, Amherst, MA, from 27-28 October 2017, and, in conjunction with NEPCA, the Fantastic (Fantasy, Horror, and Science Fiction) Area is pleased to announce that the call for papers for our tenth-anniversary sessions is now available. Given the proximity to Halloween, we are especially interested in proposals that explore the motif of the monstrous but will also consider proposals outside that topic that relate to the fantastic. Scholars of all levels are invited to submit individual proposals or proposals for complete sessions; submissions will be accepted until 1 June 2017. Further details are available in the posted call for papers.